The disclosed technology relates generally to online privacy and particularly to restricting access to online communications by creating narrowcasting electronic communications.
As information sharing tools such as email and online social networks (OSNs) become have become increasingly popular, they have begun to more closely reflect people's offline lives. As these tools expand their functionality and take advantage of device mobility and location-based services (LBS), the issue of online privacy has become more important. In particular, privacy concerns are of growing importance as the uncontrolled use of users' personal information can subject the users to unwanted consequences, ranging from nuisance e-mail to fraud.
In response to the increasing need for users to limit access to their information, online communication and online social networking sites have expanded their privacy provisions to allow users to restrict access to their communications. These expanded privacy provisions have included allowing users to create personalized “friends lists”. When a user specifies that a message or a posting will only be made available to a certain friends list, only those individuals whose names are included on the friends list will receive the message. This is distinct from the model of public posting on the web where information on a public web site is available to anyone on the network.